Common Google AdWords Mistakes?

Common Google AdWords Mistakes? A poorly managed campaign can cost more than it brings in, but a well managed campaign can keep your store or company in business. It all comes down to how much you know about AdWords and how smartly you can manage your campaigns.

Common Google AdWords Mistakes? Not Grouping Keywords Correctly. Not Using the Right Keyword Matches. Not Using Negative Keywords. Not Trusting Numbers More than Your Creativity. Not Bidding on Your Own Brand. Not Knowing the Lifetime Value (LTV) of Customers. Not Testing the Optimal Ad Position. Not Knowing Who You’re Competing Against. Expecting Too Much from AdWords.  (Specifically for E-commerce Businesses), Not Directing Visitors to the Appropriate Product or Category Page.

Not Grouping Keywords Correctly AdWords is set up so you can create campaign ad groups to manage different types of campaigns. (If you have a product campaign and a content campaign, each of them can be managed separately.) Within each campaign, you can break down your ads and keywords into ad groups. Not using ad groups is one of the biggest mistakes people make. Instead of segmenting their ads into groups based around similar types of keywords, they lump all of their keywords into one ad group and show everyone the same ad.

2.Not Using the Right Keyword Matches.

3: Not Using Negative Keywords A type of keyword that prevents your ad from being triggered by a certain word or phrase.   Your ads aren’t shown to anyone who is searching for that phrase. This is also known as a negative match. Negative broad match Negative phrase match Negative exact match

4. Not Trusting Numbers More than Your Creativity. You should always be testing your copy. You can try Two Different Headline Variations, the same headlines but different body copy, or the same copy but a different call to action. Testing different variations will help you to know what works best. Sometimes mentioning a benefit will increase click-throughs and/or conversions. Other times, a different headline will improve your results. You’ll never know until you test. Testing

5: Not Bidding on Your Own Brand A lot of people make the mistake of not bidding on their own brand. They assume that since they already rank for their own brand, they don’t need to advertise for it. That’s one way to look at it. Another way is to realize that if you aren’t advertising for your brand, other companies will. They’ll use your brand name for an ad group and target your visitors. Yes, you’ll rank first for the organic term, but your competitor may be advertising directly above that result.

6: Not Knowing the Lifetime Value (LTV) of Customers Have you ever calculated the LTV for your customers? If not, there’s no way to know how much you can spend on AdWords per acquisition. CPA = Total Cost/Conversions.   Two ways to decrease your AdWords CPA are: 1. Decrease Cost-per-Click (CPC) 2. Increase Conversion Rates

1. Decrease Cost-per-Click (CPC) One way to decrease cost-per-click (CPC) is by improving the Quality Scores of your keywords. Each keyword in your AdWords account will have a Quality Score between 1 and 10.  Another way to decrease your account’s CPA is to look for new keywords to use with lower CPCs. 

2. Increase Conversion Rates Another way to decrease your AdWords account’s CPA is by improving the conversion rates of the landing pages used for you ads.   By increasing the number of conversions and keeping the cost the same, you decrease the cost-per-acquisition.

7: Not Testing The Optimal Ad Position Test to find the optimal position by raising or lowering your bid on cost per click. Lower it and then see what happens. If Google suggests a $1 to $3 bid, start with $1 to see what the results are. If they’re good enough, you may not need to pay more per click.

8: Not Knowing Who You’re Competing Against  First, scan your competitors’ ad copy to see what you can learn and apply. Then, scan their landing pages to see how you can improve your pages. Once that’s done, test new ad copy based on what you’ve learned, and then create new landing pages and test them against your old ones. Keep testing until you improve your conversion rates.

9: Expecting Too Much from AdWords  Start with a large enough budget that allows you to drive a significant amount of traffic and gives you time to tweak and optimize your campaigns. Make sure you also stick with the campaigns long enough to give them time to gain traction and to give yourself time to figure out how AdWords works and how you can get the highest return.

10: (Specifically for E-commerce Businesses), Not Directing Visitors to the Appropriate Product or Category Page  Make sure the page people land on matches the ad copy they clicked. For example, if you sell wedding related items, create ad groups based around themes like “bridesmaid gifts” and “groomsmen gifts.” Then take people to category pages for each of these items instead of to your landing page where they’ll have to click around to find the products they were interested in. You also can test directing people to individual product pages that convert well. If you sell personalized bags that sell well, test an ad group that sends people directly to the product page, bypassing the homepage and the category pages.

Conclusions Following the recommendations to avoid these top 10 mistakes people make with Google AdWords will help you optimize your campaigns and avoid the common pitfalls most people get stuck in with AdWords.